Sakurai Describes Rosalina's Play Style for Smash Bros 4

In his latest pic of the day for the upcoming Super Smash Bros. 4, Masahiro Sakurai gave us a taste of how the space princess plays. If you missed the news earlier this week, she was revealed during a Nintendo Direct in which she was confirmed for both Mario Kart 8 and Smash 4.

We were given an idea of her moves from the unveil trailer, but now we know exactly how she is meant to play:

Rosalina and Luma can be right by each other or set farther apart. They're both controlled by the player, so a smash attack can be done from far off. Remote control all the way!

This effectively makes Rosalina a zoning style fighter, which is pretty unique for the series. Zoning certainly isn't new to fighting games, Dhalsim in Street Fighter 2 pretty much wrote the book on it. What is interesting though is that Smash Bros is typically a 4 player game, so using ranged attacks on one character could lead to you being wide open to attacks from two other players.

In the trailer, however, you see that exact scenario--where Luma is launching an attack in one direction, while Rosalina attacks in the other... meaning she's not in a vulnerable state during ranged attacks. Another interesting move teased in the trailer shows her deflecting a projectile from Mario.

This also seems different from Ice Climbers, in which you were always in control of at least one of them while the other became A.I. controlled if you were spaced too far apart.

After seeing her in action during the trailer, I feel she comes very close to Viola from Soul Calibur V. Viola is a zoning/trap style character that can send her crystal ball out as either a projectile, or leave it placed and then call it in to attack while she launches her own attacks.

Rosalina is also seen juggling a character back and forth with Luma, which aligns with previous hints of some form of combo system finally being added to Smash.

Super Smash Bros for WiiU and Super Smash Bros for 3DS both launch next year, but rumors of a Spring release have been shot down by Nintendo.